Share 37_1_SAN FRANCISCO_04-92_0033

All materials on our website are shared by users. If you have any questions about copyright issues, please report us to resolve them. We are always happy to assist you.

Related Documents

Share

Transcript

INFLUENCE OF CATALYST ON SULFUR DISTRIBUTION IN FCC GASOLINE Robert R. Gatte , Robert
H
Harding , Thomas
G.
Albro , Don
S.
Chinb and Richard
F.
Wormsbecherb
W.
R. Grace and Co. Research Division bDavison Chemical Division Washington Research Center
7379
Route
32,
Columbia, MD
21044
Keywords: Catalytic Cracking, Sulfur, Reformulated Gasoline In an effort to learn more about the role of the catalyst on the sulfur content and distribution in FCC gasoline, several catalysts have been tested, and the resulting gasoline range sulfur species examined in detail. In addition, model compound studies have been conducted to examine the cracking of thiophene over the same catalysts. It has been found that catalysts which produce widely different hydrocarbon distributions during FCC produce only marginally different sulfur distributions in the gasoline range. In addition, catalysts which have significant hydrogen-transfer activity more effectively convert thiophene to H,S than those with low hydrogen-transfer activity. These findings show that the FCC catalyst may have
a
role to play in the production of low-sulfur reformulated gasoline. Introduction The reformulated gasoline regulations mandated by the Clean
Air
Act Amendment of
1990
have set new limits
on
the composition
of
gasoline to be sold in many parts
of
the U.S.'. Meeting the requirements
of
the Act (as specified by the EPA) will present a considerable challenge to the refining industry over the course of the next decade'. Besides setting limits on the levels
of
oxygenates and aromatics (particularly benzene) in reformulated gasoline, it is anticipated that the EPA will set an additional limit on the level
of
gasoline A recent report from the Auto/Oil
Air
Quality Improvement Research Program clearly showed that reduction in the gasoline sulfur level from
500
ppm to
50
pprn had a significant favorable impact on tailpipe emissions45. The reason is that sulfur emissions poison the active noble metal in emission control catalysts, thus, lower sulfur results in a more effective catalytic converter. FCC naphtha contributes the largest fraction of
sulfur
to the total gasoline pool. In fact,
75%
to
90%
of pool sulfur can be traced to the FCC unit, while only
35%
to
40%
of
the pool volume is FCC gasoline637. Thus, any move to reduce gasoline sulfur content will invariably impact the FCC unit in some way.
Of
the possible options, hydrotreating either the FCC feedstock
or
the FCC naphtha is the most obvious. However, with the concomitant need to reduce the aromatic content of the reformulated gasoline pool, reformer severity will probably be reduced which will limit the refinery's hydrogen supply. In addition, in order to reduce the gasoline sulfur content to the proposed levels
(30-50
PPm), deep hydrotreating will most likely be required.
33
A
potentially less expensive option
is
the catalytic removal of sulfur compounds in the FCC unit. In order to examine this alternative, we have studied the impact of
the
FCC catalyst on
the
gasoline sulfur content. Previous workers have examined the
sulfur
distributions resulting from thermal cracking of gas oils', while others have focussed on the effect of the feedstock and operating conditions on the final
sulfur
distrib~tion~-'~. owever, to date, no study
of
the effect of the FCC catalyst on gasoline sulfur content has been reported. In this study, we explored the impact of variations in FCC catalyst properties on the concentration and distribution of gasoline range sulfur compounds in FCC naphtha. In addition, we examined the conversion of thiophene in a thiophene/hexadecane mixture over the same catalysts in order to determine the extent and importance of secondary cracking reactions, Le. overcracking , on the final sulfur distribution. Exuerimental The catalysts used for this study are typical
of
the types of faujasite-based materials which are commercially available, and were chosen to provide a wide variation of hydrogen- transfer
(H-T)
activityI4-l6. Catalyst properties are given in Table
1.
The REY catalyst showed the highest steamed unit cell size, and was expected to have the highest H-T activity. In contrast, the USY/Matrix and USY-G catalysts had the lowest steamed unit cell size and thus, the lowest
H-T
activity. The REUSY catalyst showed properties intermediate between the REY and
USY s.
All of the catalysts were steam-deactivated for
4
hours at 1500°F prior to testing. Gas oil cracking experiments were run in the Davison Circulating Riser (DCR ) which was run in the adiabatic mode with
a
riser outlet temperature of 970°F. The feed used in the DCR was a
sour
heavy gas oil which contained 2.67
wt
sulfur . H,S in the light gas fraction was determined by GC analysis. Feed and liquid-product
sulfur
contents were measured using a LECO sulfur analyzer. Sulfur on coke was determined by measuring
SO,
content of the regenerator flue gas.
Sulfur
material balances between 99% and 102% were consistently obtained. Detailed identification of the gasoline range sulfur compounds was obtained using a HP 5890
G
equipped with a PONA capillary column and an Atomic Emission Detector (GCAED). In this system, the separated compounds from the column exit are broken down into constituent elements and excited in a plasma. The various atoms then emit light at characteristic wavelengths and quantitative element-specific information is obtained by monitoring the wavelength(s) characteristic of a specific element. Individual sulfur compound identifications were made using a combination of GCAED and GC-MS.
A
typical chromatogram is shown in Figure
1.
The hexadecane and thiophene used in the model compound experiments were 99+
%
purity gold label Aldrich products. Hexadecane conversion was determined by GC analysis (HP 5890 equipped with a 19091s-00150 m Fused Silica Capillary column). The reactor system had a standard fixed-bed configuration and the liquid mixture was pumped into the reaction chamber with a syringe infusion pump at the rate of .6 g/min. Nitrogen was co-fed with the hydrocarbons at the rate of
10
cc/min. Contact time was fived at
3
minutes, and weight hourly space velocity
(WHSV)
was varied by changing the amount of catalyst in the reactor tube.
To
maintain constant reactor heat capacity the catalyst was diluted with alundum
(EM
Science, calcined for 2 hrs. at 1300°F) to a constant bed volume of
4
ml. Alundum alone shows less than
1
%
conversion for this pseudocomponent mixture. Liquid products were collected in an ice bath and then analyzed by GC. The volume
34
of the gas products was determined by water displacement. The gas products were analyzed by
FID
and TCD on a Varian Vista
6000
Gas Chromatograph equipped with a
50
m Chrompack Fused Silica column 7515. Coke levels were determined by mass difference between the catalyst after
100
C
calcination and 540 C calcination for
1
hour. Only
mass
balances above 97% are reported in this study. Results and Discussion Table
I
contains a constant
(70
wt )
conversion comparison of the four catalysts tested in the Davison Circulating Riser (DCR).
A
more detailed analysis of the DCR data is given in a previous paper . From the data, it appears that all of the catalysts are equally efficient at converting feed sulfur from LCO/HCO into lighter products, with the exception of USY-G which shows somewhat lower
sulfur
conversion activity.
No
significant differences in product yields are observed: The majority (about 40%)
of
the feed sulfur is converted into
H,S,
about 3% is converted into coke, while roughly
2
ends up in the gasoline fraction. However, on closer analysis of the sulfur distribution in the gasoline fraction, some differences are observed. For all catalysts, the majority
of
the gasoline range sulfur compounds are thiophene derivatives. However, the catalysts with high hydrogen-transfer activity (REY, REUSY) produced about 8% less gasoline sulfur than those with low hydrogen-transfer activity (USY, USY-G). This result was unexpected, since thiophene is aromatic and hydrogen-transfer over FCC catalysts typically results in the formation, not the destruction, of aromatic
molecule^ ^^ ^.
Another difference between the two catalyst types is the molecular weight distribution of the gasoline range sulfur products. While the amounts
of
lighter products (mercaptans, thiophene, tetrahydrothiophene) is similar for all four, the low H-T catalysts produced larger amounts
of
the heavier species (propylthiophenes, butylthiophenes, benzothiophene). In addition to sulfur content, future reformulated gasoline regulations will also include T90 (the distillation temperature at which 90%
of
the fuel has boiled away) as a variable in the complex model to be used for gasoline certification. Lowering T90 reduces the average molecular weight of gasoline which allows for better vaporization and cleaner combustion in automobile engines. In our study, reduction
of
T90
from the current level of 380°F (430°F endpoint) to the proposed level of 300°F (340°F endpoint) has the effect of removing the heavy sulfur compounds from the resulting gasoline.
All
of the benzothiophene and butylthiophenes and some
of
the propylthiophenes are removed by this change in
90.
This effectively eliminates the differences in gasoline sulfur distribution shown by the four catalyst systems . In an attempt to determine the extent and importance of secondary cracking reactions on the final
sulfur
distribution, model compound cracking experiments were run for three
of
the catalysts. Thiophene was tested as a mixture with hexadecane in an effort to mimic a typical hydrocarbon environment during the cracking reactions. The mixture contained 0.5 wt% (SO00 ppm)
sulfur.
Results from this set of experiments are shown in Figures
2
and
3
and Table 11. The data show that, for all catalysts, the conversion
of
thiophene is low and independent
of
the conversion of hexadecane (which ranged in conversion from 2040%). For our data, there is a linear relationship between -In(l-thiophene conversion) and the reciprocal of space velocity (l/WHSV). The linear yield curves, shown for the REY catalyst in Figure
2,
further demonstrate that the product selectivity of the thiophene is unaffected by the changes in hexadecane product distribution over this range of conversion. Although we expect the alkylthiophenes to be direct reaction products
of
thiophene with hexadecane product precursors, these species must be in
'
35
great excess with respect to the thiophene
if
they do not affect either the conversion
or
the selectivity of the thiophene. To determine the relative cracking rates
of
hexadecane and thiophene, we used a technique for the cracking kinetics of model compound mixtures which is described in detail elsewhere''. The cracking of the mixture can be represented by
two
coupled nonlinear equations: where subscripts H and
T
represent Hexadecane and Thiophene respectively, C is the concentration,
K
is the
Langmuir Hinshelwood Hougen Watson
LHHW) adsorption constant, kj is the first order reaction through the jth reaction pathway,
G
and N are the decay parameters for time on stream
T,
C,
is the initial concentration in the reaction mixture, is the adsorption
j,
and [VE] represents the volume expansion of the mixture. Equations
1
and
2
can be simplified by solving for dC,,/dC, to obtain: constant of the products through reaction pathway
j
nj is the stoichiometry
o
s
eaction pathway By using equation
3)
to examine the relative conversions of hexadecane and thiophene, we can obtain a ratio of effective rate constants
K
that is independent of the catalyst deactivation rate, most competitive sorption terms, and the volume expansion
of
the mixture. In Figure
2
we plot C,
vs.
C
or the REY (high
H-T)
and USY (low H-T) catalysts along with the curve fitted to equation
3).
The data show that hexadecane cracks approximately
10.4
times faster than thiophene under these conditions.
No
difference is observed between the
two
faujasite types, which indicates that the increased hydrogen-transfer kinetics of the REY does not alter the relative cracking rates
of
the thiophene and the hexadecane. While analysis of the kinetic data show no difference between the rates
of
thiophene cracking over the high and low H-T catalysts, there is a difference between the product selectivities of the catalysts. Table
I1
shows the product distributions for the four catalysts interpolated to a constant
4
mol% conversion. At this low conversion, only primary products are expected to form. The product selectivity varies smoothly with the hydrogen-transfer activity of the catalysts. With REY, tetrahydrothiophene is the most abundant product, while ethylthiophene is the major product over USY. REUSY shows behavior intermediate between the other two. This is consistent with the riser data (Table
I)
which showed increased levels
of
the heavier thiophene derivatives
for
the low H-T catalysts. It is also interesting to note that there is some formation of
H,S,
a secondary reaction product, over the REY and REUSY catalysts, even at this low conversion level.
36

Thank you for visiting our website and your interest in our free products and services. We are nonprofit website to share and download documents. To the running of this website, we need your help to support us.